Where do you draw the line on when to buy gems?

[Friend.2837]

So when I started GW2 I brought some gems and converted them to gold because I *really* wanted some weapon skins that were many hundreds of gold on TP. Later I realized that really wasn't satisfying at all, so I started buying *everything* I needed with gold farmed in-game.

Now I'm debating with myself where to draw the line; I brought living world seasons with gems that I could've converted from gold, so maybe I could've done a couple weeks worth of fractals instead? I also want the 5 shared inventory slots pack, and I *could* liquidate my material storage to get that instead of buying gems...

But, all those materials were going towards a set of legendary armor (that I'll be able to get in 3 days, wooo), and I was REALLY looking forwards to that.

It's already been shown that farming for gold in-game is NOT at all an efficient use of your time objectively, compared to working and then buying gems. But then, neither is playing the game at all! I enjoy the game, and to some extent I feel like using real world money to buy the things I want cheapens my experience. On the other hand, at what point should I deem something too much of a pointless grind and drop the cash, saving myself time to play content I enjoy more?

I've never been much of an MMO player before GW2. I played games like League of Legends, where the enjoyment came solely from playing, so buying skins with money to enhance that enjoyment was a no-brainer. In MMOs, a lot (not all) of the enjoyment comes from progression - and you can BUY progression, which makes for a strange dynamic.

I know this is a pretty funny debate to have, and that it's entirely up to personal preference. I'm just curious how you all think about this problem.

[Danikat.8537]

I don't draw a line in the sense you're describing it. When I want to buy something I'll work out what it costs in real money and think about whether it's worth that much to me. If so I'll get it (buying gems if I don't already have enough). If not I'll work out what it costs in gold and think about if that's worth it. I tend to value gold less than real money, partially because it has fewer uses because I can only use it to get stuff within GW2 and partially because I rarely farm gold so whatever I have was earned while doing things I'd do anyway and therefore basically free. But that doesn't mean I'm going to get things I don't really want when there's always something else I could buy with it.

The second one has an added complication because the exchange rate often shoots up when new items come out, meaning exchanging gold on the spot makes things more expensive than they would otherwise be, so I won't do it then - I'll wait until I feel like I have some spare gold and the exchange rate is reasonable and do it then. (Sometimes I'll sell excess materials to get gold, but never ones I have a use for.) So that can mean missing an item's availability (although that's less of a problem recently, stuff seems to stick around for longer) and then I have to wait to get it later.

I know it sounds complicated, but usually if it takes me more than a minute to decide it's because I'm not sure if I really want the thing, not deciding how to pay. For example I think the Rebel Long and Short Boots look cool, but all the character's I'd use them on already have access to other skins which are just as good, so I'm not sure it's worth buying them when it's not really adding anything. I'm tempted but it's hard to justify the purchase in either currency.

As far as I remember I haven't bought gems to convert to gold. In-game items I just get with gold.
 

1 hour ago, Friend.2837 said:

It's already been shown that farming for gold in-game is NOT at all an efficient use of your time objectively, compared to working and then buying gems. But then, neither is playing the game at all!

I understand the maths, but this idea never made much sense to me because there's too many other factors. For one thing there's so many other things I can do with real money, many of which are more appealing to me than items in GW2 that if I'm earning extra from work I'm not likely to spend it on items in the game. (And yes, for the same reason it's quite common that when I'm going through the process above I decide I like something, check what it costs in real money and decide I don't like it that much.)

But more importantly in my experience spending extra time farming (or just playing) a game is much more flexible than doing extra work. I've had a lot of different jobs and none of them have allowed me to randomly do an hour or two of overtime as and when I felt like it. Most of the ones which did offer over-time were so badly paid that there was a lot of competition for the extra shifts so they restricted how many you could do and there would always be something more important to spend it on. My current job doesn't allow me paid over-time except in very specific cirumstances, instead I get extra time off to balance it out. I know there are 'gig' jobs where you're sort-of self-employed and can do it as and when you feel like it but even that is a lot more hassle than sitting at the computer on a Saturday morning eating my breakfast while running around a map gathering materials. I'm not convinced it's a practical option for the majority of people. Also those jobs will eventually remove you from the system (effectively 'firing' you even though they say you were never an employee) if you don't do shifts often enough.

Maybe it works for aspiring whales who want to be regularly spending significant amounts on the game, but I suspect most people just want to buy the odd thing now and again (I've worked out I spend about 8,000 gems per year and I suspect that's more than a lot of people do) so it doesn't make sense to approach it that way.

Edited October 8, 2023 by Danikat.8537

[Manasa Devi.7958]

I've never spent any money on the game other than the original release and all expansions. I've bought tens of thousands of gems with gold (probably hundreds of thousands actually). I always have more gold than I know what to do with so it never made sense to buy gems with real money. I did use some gem cards that I received as gifts though. I think 4,000 gems worth. I've always just been lucky with gold, I got a huge payoff from an early investment, and even got a decent profit ecto gambling, both the core and the PoF achievements maxed. Apart from that, I never really made much of an effort.

I can't honestly say if I'd buy gems if I didn't have the gold option. I've never been tempted to, so I don't know how I'd deal with that.

Edited October 8, 2023 by Manasa Devi.7958

[Cuks.8241]

Well I don't draw the line really, it's just that I don't really care much about cosmetics. So it's quite easy.

I bought a few cosmetics items over the years (like equipment 5 skins, 2 mount skins and 2 glider skins) but I barely use them anyway (really just using 1). I do make a look for a character, maybe small variation for each build, mostly just colours and never touch it again. There are more than enough in game skins for me and they even look better.

Mounts, I have not been impressed by non vanilla skins I bought or got lucky with with blc keys (in game ones, never buy those). The vanilla mounts are just so well designed down to each detail. The store ones just seem a step behind, there is a little bit of polish missing. So not buying those anymore.

So it comes down to convenience for me. And there is just not that much you can get there and even less I actually need. And I have thousands of gold with nothing to spend on. So yeah not spending money is not a problem. I might buy some gems with $ instead of gold to support and because it's not really money I miss. But it's minimal.

 

[casualkenny.9817]

I dun farm so gold is not easy for me. I get cash shop functions and skins with cashgems, and in-game skins with gold-gold, with a little bit of converting gold-to-gems if I'm short of a lil gems 

[Mistwraithe.3106]

It depends on many factors of course, particularly whether you can spare a bit of money to buy some gems and how willing you are to give Arena Net some real money.

Anyway, I can totally relate to much of what you've said, including that obviously the easiest way to make gold is to not play the game, spend more time on paid RL work and then buy gems, but that's completely contrary to the fact that GW2 is meant to be a game played for fun! I've had similar thoughts.

Since you asked, my rules are essentially that I'll happily spend RL money to buy gems for things that improve my overall gameplay experience and avoid me wasting time on busy work, but I do NOT spend RL money to buy gems and exchange for gold so I can buy resources to craft legendaries. The reasoning being that the former makes my gameplay more fun and saves me time microing things but the latter would actually replace gameplay with paying RL money instead - I want to earn Ascended/Legendaries etc in game rather than through my credit card as that makes the game pointless to me (sounds like you feel a bit the same).

So, I have purchased infinite gathering tools (two sets actually, I bought a second for another character as the first was so nice being able to always be gathering with top level equipment and not messing around with replacing them), the coppermatic and silvermatic salvagers (again, nice to stop messing with buying salvage kits), and a couple of lots of the 5 shared slots packs (I think I have about 15 shared slots now, some from expansions or giveaways but most purchased). I have a few extra bag slots and inventory/build slots I have purchased too, plus other miscellaneous things, tho I've got as many of these from things like Prime Gaming giveaways, Twitch drops, etc. Note that some of these things do save/make money over time (eg avoiding buying salvage/gathering kits, plus my gathering tools are unbound and volatile so make a bit of money slowly) but I'm fine with that.

Using RL money to buy skins would be a grey area for me, something I don't intend to do. Generally I'm happy with the skins I can unlock in game so I haven't felt a need to spend RL money on skins but that's just me. (I guess I have in a way for the gathering tools but really that was about utility and the cosmetics was just a bonus).

I should add that I'm also happy sending some of my RL money Anets way. I can afford it and I really enjoy GW2 so it's a way of showing my appreciation and obviously the more people who do that the more resources they have to keep working on the game.

Edited October 9, 2023 by Mistwraithe.3106

[Chichimec.9364]

5 hours ago, Friend.2837 said:

.I know...that it's entirely up to personal preference. I'm just curious how you all think about this problem.

 

4 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

I don't draw a line in the sense you're describing it. When I want to buy something I'll work out what it costs in real money and think about whether it's worth that much to me. If so I'll get it (buying gems if I don't already have enough)...

For me it's not a problem and I generally follow a variation on what Danikat is saying. If there's something in the gem store that I want, I'll use real money to buy the gems to get it.  The gold I get ingame mostly goes for legendaries. That gives me an ingame goal to work toward and I enjoy the process of making gold in this game to reach my current goal. Oh, and I'm not rich irl - far from it. I'm retired and live on a small Social Security check. It's enough to leave me with a bit of disposable income every month and that's what I use to buy gems with when there is something in particular I want.

[Arya Whitefire.8423]

My line is simple, I never convert gems to gold.  Since all that does is hasten the day of the final quit, and at the final quit, all money spent on gems was pointless anyways.

[illuminati.8453]

In the end gold become useless and buying gems for cosmetics is what people generally do.  I'm talking pretty late, like after all your legendaries, etc.   That is where I tend to draw the line, after gold is pointless.  

Edited October 9, 2023 by illuminati.8453

[DarcShriek.5829]

I never pay cash for gems.  The gold exchange is good enough for me.

[Panda.1967]

I draw the line at buying gems specifically to convert into gold… if something is on the gemstore that I want and I can afford the gems, I’ll buy the gems for it… if something is on the tradepost I’ll grind for the gold. I only convert gems to gold if I already bought what I wanted snd had some gems left over but not enough to buy anything else.

basically, to me the line is “is it a gemstore item”

Edited October 9, 2023 by Panda.1967

[jason.1083]

7 hours ago, Friend.2837 said:

So when I started GW2 I brought some gems and converted them to gold because I *really* wanted some weapon skins that were many hundreds of gold on TP. Later I realized that really wasn't satisfying at all, so I started buying *everything* I needed with gold farmed in-game.

Now I'm debating with myself where to draw the line; I brought living world seasons with gems that I could've converted from gold, so maybe I could've done a couple weeks worth of fractals instead? I also want the 5 shared inventory slots pack, and I *could* liquidate my material storage to get that instead of buying gems...

But, all those materials were going towards a set of legendary armor (that I'll be able to get in 3 days, wooo), and I was REALLY looking forwards to that.

It's already been shown that farming for gold in-game is NOT at all an efficient use of your time objectively, compared to working and then buying gems. But then, neither is playing the game at all! I enjoy the game, and to some extent I feel like using real world money to buy the things I want cheapens my experience. On the other hand, at what point should I deem something too much of a pointless grind and drop the cash, saving myself time to play content I enjoy more?

I've never been much of an MMO player before GW2. I played games like League of Legends, where the enjoyment came solely from playing, so buying skins with money to enhance that enjoyment was a no-brainer. In MMOs, a lot (not all) of the enjoyment comes from progression - and you can BUY progression, which makes for a strange dynamic.

I know this is a pretty funny debate to have, and that it's entirely up to personal preference. I'm just curious how you all think about this problem.

I bought the vast majority of my gemstore items with gold, we're talking about well over well over 15k gold on the gemstore. My only reason to spend money for gems is for an item that I really want to drop when I'm out of gold at the time.

It's that simple. And I never convert gems into gold, I usually have emergency gold sources for that.

[Zebulous.2934]

I pay cash for cosmetics I might use.  I try to only buy keys when they are on sale.  About once a year Anet will sell gem cards on Amazon at 5% or 10% off (limit 2) and I try to buy those.

[Danikat.8537]

BTW if anyone is looking at this topic and thinking the answers don't make sense because it sounds like no one ever buys gems to convert to gold I think it's worth remembering forums only attract a small sub-set of players and it's usually people who are more interested in and committed to the game, because they're the ones who will want to talk about it as well as playing it. That's like to also mean people who either play enough that they end up with spare gold reasonably often, or people who know how to make gold quickly when they need it, or both.

I don't think we're likely to hear from the type of people who routinely buy gems to convert to gold because I suspect they're infrequent players, the ones who can only play for a bit on weekends or maybe the odd evening and may not play much at all in between expansions coming out, but also have enough disposable income that spending $10-20 for a skin from the Trading Post, or even more for a 'big' item, isn't unreasonable. My other MMO sells houses on the cash shop,  some of them cost $100 and those sell (some of them via people selling the cash shop currently to other players for gold).

The exchange rate fluctuates all the time, but it often noticably drops after an expansion, and even more so about a month after PoF came out when the griffon was discovered. I suspect quite a few people bought gems and converted them to gold to get the 250g needed for the collection.

Having said that I've heard that in most games the majority of players don't pay anything beyond the purchase price. It's often discussed with free-to-play games because it's much more relevant for them, but I was reading an article about Cyberpunk 2077's new DLC which mentioned that the reported sales for it are impressive because the same applies there - typically the majority of people who buy a game never buy any DLC at all. So I do think it's likely that most GW2 players not only don't buy gold with gems but don't buy gems with real money at all and only get gem store items when they convert gold.

[Bladestrom.6425]

@Friend.2837

 

Personally I buy stuff from the gem shop if I know it will give me long term pleasure, for me that's build templates, storage, armor skins, permanent access items etc.  I keep my gold for in game stuff and stockpile for legendries and always being able to freely buy stuff whenever Ii want.  I budget a £10 a month or so for gems on the basis I would buy a sub in other games, and it feels good to support the game.

 

[Futa.4375]

I don't really draw a line, I don't really care about skins so it helps a lot, I'm even skipping the ones in the vault and going for gold since I got everything I wanted.
Overall I didn't spent much on this game except for the expansions, I like to play games, not buy my way through the game. So gold to gem it is if I want anything, mostly QoL.

I've always thought that people who want to whale will whale, people who don't want to buy gems usually won't buy gems, almost ever.

If I had to draw a line I'd say it would be 13€ a month like I used to do until around the end of IBS, like the sub I paid in FFXI for years, as a mean to support the devs and the game. But with the way things have been going since EoD I have no desire to support ANet anymore.

[Cyninja.2954]

My personal approach:

1. I'm in the comfortable position that I can buy gems if I want something from the gem store. This usually goes to some select skins, I don't value gem store skins that highly and usually only get one if it really works well with an idea I have, and most often convenience items (convenience items over skins)

2. I rarely exchange gold for gems and instead save the gold for in game goals like legendary items, achievements, etc. For example: pre EoD I had saved up 12-14k liquid gold as well as a ton of materials which allowed me to work on getting the gen3 legendaries and all their skins over the next 6-18 months.

3. I never exchange gems for gold. No need for it, I'd rather save for a while and wait for something in game or save for the next expensive thing. I also feel it blurs the line of game play and acquiring items via game play means versus strait up buying. I get no enjoyment of simply "having" something. That's a personal approach though and if others want to buy their gold to save time, that doesn't concern me

4. I rarely (almost never) gamble with keys or ecto or w/e

[magickthief.6492]

Buy gems, buy more gems. Time is a non replenishable commodity. Playing this game may be a waste of time, but why waste more of it. Buy more gems.

[Zera.9435]

It boils down to the simple equation time = money. You need to balance that equation for yourself to determine how much of one you want to spend in order to get value that is perceptible in terms of the other. Less time = more money, while more time = less money. You can multiply both terms by 'spent' and it still holds. Yes, it is algebra.

I myself have spent real money on this game plenty of times. Most of it has been through the gem store. I've bought bank storage, storage stack size, character slots, shared inventory slots, infinite gathering tools, outfits, mount skins, and sometimes I also do the gold exchange. All of that money was money that I had allocated in my budget as money that I would literally use to start a fire. It's called discretionary spending, and you are totally allowed to utilize your own budget to include discretionary spending where/when/however possible. That same money that you would use to buy this game, its expansions, or other games, is what you would use to buy gems.

[Panda.1967]

9 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

BTW if anyone is looking at this topic and thinking the answers don't make sense because it sounds like no one ever buys gems to convert to gold I think it's worth remembering forums only attract a small sub-set of players and it's usually people who are more interested in and committed to the game, because they're the ones who will want to talk about it as well as playing it. That's like to also mean people who either play enough that they end up with spare gold reasonably often, or people who know how to make gold quickly when they need it, or both.

It also attracts people, like myself, who don’t know how to make gold quickly when we need it but still don’t see converting Gems to Gold as a worthwhile investment… I’d rather play the game and earn enough gold in game however long it may take than buy gems with the express purpose of converting to gold… but I have no issue with buying gems for things that are actually on the gem store…

[Mistwraithe.3106]

It occurs to me that despite writing a longish more complex post earlier, basically I follow the same rule as various others here. I have never exchanged gold for gems or gems for gold. I use gold for in game goals which require gold and I buy gems with RL money if I want something from the gem store.

I can see that if someone reaches end game and has all the legendaries etc that they want or if they play enough that they are swimming in gold then converting gold to gems is the obvious move. I don't see myself ever reaching that point tho :-).

[ProtoGunner.4953]

I don't care, I usually have around 100K on my bank and other assets. So if I wanna buy gems, I buy. Not much lately, be cause the game is rather boring for me atm.

[kharmin.7683]

I play very casually, so I don't really pull in a lot of gold.  I like to wait until I have a pretty good surplus before I buy gems, just in case something comes up and I need gems in a hurry. 

I'd really love it if the prices came back down (who other than Anet wouldn't).  I can recall not purchasing until the price dropped below 70G.   Now, it's double that.  😞

[Danikat.8537]

12 hours ago, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

It occurs to me that despite writing a longish more complex post earlier, basically I follow the same rule as various others here. I have never exchanged gold for gems or gems for gold. I use gold for in game goals which require gold and I buy gems with RL money if I want something from the gem store.

I can see that if someone reaches end game and has all the legendaries etc that they want or if they play enough that they are swimming in gold then converting gold to gems is the obvious move. I don't see myself ever reaching that point tho :-).

One thing I'm finding interesting is that even though a lot of people have the same general approach there's a lot of variation in when they decide they can afford to convert gold to gems.

I think I'm a lot quicker to do it than many people, if I notice I'm above 100g I start thinking about what to spend it on, and that usually means either getting something from the TP or converting some of it to gems. I definitely would wait until I've got full legendaries because that's probably never going to happen. I've made 4 weapons and a backpack in 11 years and I'm just starting to think about making another after finishing my last one a year ago. (I'm bad at upgrades in general, I found an ascended sword in a backpack I meant to pass to a character who doesn't have ascended weapons yet, I've still got characters without relics and most of them don't have infusions.)